You're currently viewing our forum as a guest. This means you are limited to certain areas of the board and there are some features you can't use. If you join our community, you'll be able to access member-only sections, and use many member-only features such as customizing your profile, sending personal messages, and voting in polls. Registration is simple, fast, and completely free.

We're almost at the end of 2008 and that means it's time to choose what games you think were the best released this year. Please name the three games you enjoyed the most and list them as 1st, 2nd and 3rd favorite. Remember, they need to have been released in 2008 to be included here.

1. Guitar Hero: World TourWhat an awesome game! It was certainly my most anticipated release of this year, and it did not let me down. Playing Metallica's latest album in its entirety is an amazing experience, not to mention that the fact that Guitar Hero's mix sounds better than the album version!!!!! Could you ask for anything else?

2. GTA IVIt's not San Andreas, but it isn't far off either. The missions were slightly monotonous, but overall it was a top notch game. A more than welcome addition to the incredible GTA series.

3. Little Big PlanetWhat a great little game this turned out to be! It really came out of nowhere (at least for me) and is nothing short of pure enjoyment. It's nice to see that developers can still be make such quirky, fun games in an age of flair.

You can vote for a Virtual Console game if you want. I was very tempted to vote for a game I downloaded from the PSN store...

So, here's my choices. First place was really difficult to pick this year because there were two games that I really enjoyed and felt that they were just... wow! But, here goes.

1st - Grand Theft Auto IV

Rockstar giveth and Rockstar taketh away. GTA IV changed GTA games and brought a gritty, realistic edge to them but sacrificed mission variation in doing so. It doesn't matter though, it's still one of the most accomplished and engrossing games I've ever played.

2nd - Fallout 3

It's epic, involving, massive, brutal and Fallout 3 also manages to have some of the most graphic violence you're likely to see in a game. It all comes together beautifully, improving on Bethusda's other classic (Elder Scrolls: Oblivion) in almost every way. I don't think you could ever run out of things to do in this game.

3rd - Banjo Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts

It may not be what many people wanted but in doing something different, Rare have made a game that is ridiculously easy to pick up and play and made me happy that Banjo isn't tacked on. This is a Banjo game. Deal with it. And whilst you deal with that, Rare can deal with the piss poor sales this game has gotten.

There's other games I considered; Little Big Planet, Dead Space, Gran Tursimo 5, Ninja Gaiden 2, Call of Duty: World at War, Rez HD, Endless Ocean and Flow. And they're all really, really good. But I made my choices...

I'll answer this from my very narrow, biased point of view (I barely bought any games that came out this year, mostly playing older PS2 games - in fact, the only really 'new' games I got were de Blob, SSBB and MK Wii).

1. The World Ends With You - the only game I bought that came out this year that was actually really good. A breath of fresh air in the pretty stale JRPG market, a very innovative game with great gameplay to boot.

2. de Blob - creative, innovative and a lot of fun although it cannot hold its own against most other great games I played this year like SOTC, Psychonauts, Metroid Prime

3. Super Smash Bros Brawl - was an improvement on the IMO terrible Melee, but still not my type of game. I understand it has a lot of depth, like Melee did, but it seems as if you have to give up a life to discover that depth. Just a mediocre fighting game to me, I enjoyed SoulCalibur II more (also played it this year)

honorable mention: Apollo Justice Ace Attorney

My personal GOTY would be Shadow of the Colossus, although that obviously didn't come out this year. Runners-up: Metroid Prime, Psychonauts, Super Mario Galaxy.

Don't take this list as final - I might get my 360 or PS3 before the end of the year (Christmas maybe) and I might be able to give a much better list then. But as you see, this was a very mediocre year for Wii/DS only owners (luckily I had my PS2 and GCN to hold me over until the 360/PS3).

Even though it wasn't released in 2008, it was still one of the best games of 2008.

2nd: Valkyria Chronicles

It hasn't been out that long, but I'm the quality of this game really took me by surprise. If you haven't looked into it yet, Valkyria Chronicles is a combination of turn based strategy and 3rd person shooter, with a much more human and intimate story that is usually found in a strategy game. It does this with a consistent and beautiful style, wonderful music, and near perfect balance. It manages to remove many of the irritations that are usually found in strategy games. This is really one of the most unique games ever made, and one of the most attractive at that.

1st: Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3: FES

This is without a doubt the best RPG to come out of Japan since Dragon Quest VIII, and certainly one of the most original. The translation and voice acting is among the very best, the narrative is brilliant in its execution, combat is breezy, and -- despite taking me over 100 hours to complete -- it never became stale. The stories and characters are haunting and among the most memorable I've encountered, the combat is fresh and exciting, and it is overall a high quality production. It easily makes it into the top ten games ever made, let along of this year.

Unlike previous years, I've managed to get around to actually playing some of the games I bought this year, and the fact that many/most (if not all) of these games were released this year, I actually feel somewhat prepared to offer a relevant submission to a N64ever GotY thread for once!

With that said, my top 3 games of 2008 would be:

1. Dead Space - This game is soooooooo excellent on soooooooo many levels. And on every level within the game, too Though the entire story pretty much takes place on ONE ship (or a ship within a ship ), the level design is so nicely varied from level to level that the gameplay never really gets old... environments are always freaky in a slew of different ways, and new enemies (though not as numerous as some might hope) creep out of the woodwork as you progress through the levels. Astounding graphics aside, the absent HUD and (essentially absent) pause menu really immerse you into the game, and you're constantly on edge throughout. The sound work is AWESOME... it really does its job at freaking you out with the dynamic BGM and "jump" riffs. Playing in the vacuum levels really REALLY does sound like you're in outer space, on the verge of suffocating. Actually, it doesn't sound like it... it feels like it. (It's like the dev team somehow figured out how to depressurize the atmosphere in your living room for those specific levels.) And we can't forget about the zero-G levels (yes, there's zero-G levels that may or may not be in a vacuum)... they're so intensely well-done!! Enemies can fly at you from any direction, you yourself can pretty much fly in any direction, and the physics involved in these environments is truly a blast to experience. The plot line and voice-acting are really top-notch, and though the character movement can be a little on the stiff side for NPCs, the mo-cap for your character is ALWAYS excellent. Plus, any game that successfully scares me to the point of choking on my own spit is instant win. 11/10 from 床の猫.

2. Dead Space - See above.

3. Dead Space - Did I mention "strategic dismemberment"??? 'nuff sed.

However... I really can't ignore LittleBigPlanet... this game is digital AWESOMES, and I need not explain why:1. Dead Space2. Dead Space3. LittleBigPlanet

Don't take this list as final - I might get my 360 or PS3 before the end of the year (Christmas maybe) and I might be able to give a much better list then. But as you see, this was a very mediocre year for Wii/DS only owners (luckily I had my PS2 and GCN to hold me over until the 360/PS3).

I see quite a bit of truth in this, and the list of games I mentioned perhaps reflect this. (Not to mention the example list of "big releases" alxbly provided.) Still though, 6 of 12 games I mentioned being on Nintendo platforms ain't bad.

while i am sure it is great, i have only played the demo for metal gear. LBP looks great too, but i have only seen an hour or so of it, and haven't played much myself. those would likely be the biggest contenders in my eyes.

3. Gears of War 2: It's better than Gears 1, but that's not really hard to do.Not anything against it but, I'm somewhat dissapointed with the online. It's just a Chainsaw fest as apposed to a shotgun fest.

2. Super Smash bros Brawl: One of my most anticipated games ever. It doesn't live up to my impossible expecations, but that doesn't mean it's bad by any means.It also seems different than melee, in a good way however.

1. Chrono Trigger DS: I first played Chrono Trigger 11 months ago. It was In My Opinion the best game ever and it still is.

Runner up. Grand Theft Auto 4: This was the first GTA game I've played. So I had high expectations. I was extremely dissapointed at first then decided to play through it and it was better then I thought. The missions were still somewhat tedious though.

I forgot that I had bought this the day it was released. Unfortunately I found it to be boring, dull, tedious, etc. It was the first Wii game I sold... and probably won't be the last.

Oh YEAH?!? Well, YOU'RE boring, dull, tedious, etc. and YOU will be the first Wii game I sell.

You weren't playing this alone, were you? Or maybe your friends/siblings/parents/etc. aren't any fun to play with?? Because Boom Blox is DEFINITELY a game I'd recommend to someone looking for something fun to play with just about anyone else... more so than Big Brain Academy, Wii Sports, Mario & Sonic, and... well, not Guitar Hero. But seriously... whenever I play Wii with others, Boom Blox is usually the first/only game we play. And this is amongst people spanning the whole spectrum of gamer-types, mind you. I'll admit though... I've never played this game alone.

No seriously, it was okay. The puzzles where you have to pull the blocks out worked well enough, but the other types left something to be desired. The ones where you have to throw objects at the structures were usually too simple, the ones where you shoot the blocks with guns were wildly inaccurate, the ones where you had to knock blocks into other blocks were too inconsistent, and the ones where you have to protect the creatures felt out-of-place. That's another thing, the characters in this game are the most exasperating critters this side of Pokémon.

If this game were a budget title like it should have been, I'd have probably kept it. The sad thing is that I may end up buying it again when it hits the bargain bin; I kept my save file. At this point though, I never saw myself playing it again so off it went.

Hmmmm... fair enough, I guess. Well, perhaps whenever I played it, we always just did the basic, competitive-try-to-get-the-most-points-by-knocking-crap-down game mode... we had never tried any of the other ones since this mode gave us all so much fun. You know, talking about online Wii games... this would be a pretty fun (and I'd imagine, pretty do-able) online game!! If only...

Mop, you're on a roll tonight... I totally forgot about the send-puzzles-online feature. I obviously never got that far to even see the feature within the game. And I'm quite sure it will surface in the bargain bins, so you ought hold off... if you can help it.

I think that Super Smash Brothers Brawl beats it by far. At the very least, GTAIV didn't break the gameplay of the series.

It pretty much did. The sandbox is ruined, the over the top car physics and now boring and realistic, the new police circle thing makes random crime much to hard to get away with and it kept making me interact with these boring people on a personal level.

Gee Smash Bros. had a refined game play for it to break? All I ever saw was a bunch of small fights obscured by particle effects orchestrated by button mashing.

It pretty much did. The sandbox is ruined, the over the top car physics and now boring and realistic, the new police circle thing makes random crime much to hard to get away with and it kept making me interact with these boring people on a personal level.

Gotta disagree with most things you've said there. Sorry Rag, it sounds like you gave up on the game before it gave out the good stuff. Easily done though, the first island is quite repetative and Rockstar really needed to introduce more fun elements instead of samey missions. Knuckle down and finish that island then the game really opens up.

Car physics feel more restrictive until you get used to them, after that it's hard to go back to simplistic handling of previous games because it just feels unsatisfying. The cars in other GTA's felt very similar, only the genre's really had any noticeable change (i.e. supercars handled differently to saloons). In GTA IV the rust buckets handle like s***, the mediocre saloons have individual characteristics, the supercars handle beautifully but differently; it's much more diverse and detailed than before. Expect two different cars to handle the same way and you'll be disappointed. But, more importantly, the handling is actually rewarding by itself. If you take a corner perfectly in GTA IV or evade oncoming traffic or just do anything that actually requires some skill then it's really satisying. In previous games it was piss easy to drive full speed everywhere and the only challenge was when you needed to outrun the police or another NPC.

I don't see how the sandbox is ruined... care to elaborate? It's no more restrictive than previous games (islands are blocked as before...so what's changed that warrants moaning about? ). The police circle thing (police chase you until you get out of their line of sight) actually makes it easier to get away, but you can't expect to drive in straight line to evade the poice unless you're in a seriously fast car. It's not difficult to lose them though, especially if you get brave with the oncoming traffic or clever with shortcuts and/or alleyways.

Random interactions are pretty dull at first, it opens up later in the game with better variations on what you can do. But it's still not something I'm gonna defend, it feels forced. Ultimately, you can reject everyone that calls you. It still bulls*** though, hopefully it's not something they include in future GTA games.

It pretty much did. The sandbox is ruined, the over the top car physics and now boring and realistic, the new police circle thing makes random crime much to hard to get away with and it kept making me interact with these boring people on a personal level.

Gotta disagree with most things you've said there. Sorry Rag, it sounds like you gave up on the game before it gave out the good stuff. Easily done though, the first island is quite repetative and Rockstar really needed to introduce more fun elements instead of samey missions. Knuckle down and finish that island then the game really opens up.

Car physics feel more restrictive until you get used to them, after that it's hard to go back to simplistic handling of previous games because it just feels unsatisfying. The cars in other GTA's felt very similar, only the genre's really had any noticeable change (i.e. supercars handled differently to saloons). In GTA IV the rust buckets handle like s***, the mediocre saloons have individual characteristics, the supercars handle beautifully but differently; it's much more diverse and detailed than before. Expect two different cars to handle the same way and you'll be disappointed. But, more importantly, the handling is actually rewarding by itself. If you take a corner perfectly in GTA IV or evade oncoming traffic or just do anything that actually requires some skill then it's really satisying. In previous games it was piss easy to drive full speed everywhere and the only challenge was when you needed to outrun the police or another NPC.

I don't see how the sandbox is ruined... care to elaborate? It's no more restrictive than previous games (islands are blocked as before...so what's changed that warrants moaning about? ). The police circle thing (police chase you until you get out of their line of sight) actually makes it easier to get away, but you can't expect to drive in straight line to evade the poice unless you're in a seriously fast car. It's not difficult to lose them though, especially if you get brave with the oncoming traffic or clever with shortcuts and/or alleyways.

Random interactions are pretty dull at first, it opens up later in the game with better variations on what you can do. But it's still not something I'm gonna defend, it feels forced. Ultimately, you can reject everyone that calls you. It still bulls*** though, hopefully it's not something they include in future GTA games.

I played for just over 10 hours, after the initial getting used to the game for the first half hour the rest of my time felt like a chore. I'm not going to play a game that long without having any fun and keep playing.

All the PS2 GTAs I could just pick up and play and start having fun but the attempt at realism pretty much killed that. The cop circle thing was a lot harder to get rid of for me, paint and sprays and such only work when no one is around and the unrealistic but simple car physics I preferred are gone. I don't want to play a driving game, since when has GTA been about the satisfaction of taking a corner perfectly. I prefer the instant gratification crime spree then drive through a paint and spray and forget the whole thing.

The sandbox ruined thing is to do with the fact this game has a smaller list of features than SA and VC. There's really no businesses to buy and run like those that made Vice City so fun, there's no gym for Niko to bulk up to improve his stats or fast food places to change his appearance like in SA. By the point in the game you have millions of dollars you still live in a crappy apartment.

I didn't like GTAIII, I don't like playing in the dirty streets of Liberty City. I loved the style of Vice City and the variation of San Andreas so maybe it's just the liberty city ones that aren't for me. I probably could learn to love the new engine in GTAIV: Vice City (If that's what it's going to be) but I have no more patience for it especially since from what I've heard most of the things I liked from previous games aren't there (Like PLANES)

And the GTA style humor seemed forced and didn't fit in with the realistic engine and serious story, and the soundtrack was awful. Not enough trash. To much wank.

Seems like they spent so much time of the engine they only had time to put an average game running on it. It's just GTA with no bells or whistles.

^ I don't agree with everything you've said but I understand your frustrations. GTA did change with GTA IV, so if you're expecting the same game then you'll be pissed off. I have a friend who doesn't like GTA IV either for exactly the same reasons.